North West Archives - Page 55 of 174

To Watch A Man Eat – Shakespeare North Playhouse

11Jul

By Louise KershawNo Comments

North West

To Watch A Man Eat – Shakespeare North Playhouse

One of the things I love about reviewing theatre is the wide variety of productions you get to see, and the many evenings spent engaged with the artistic endeavour of others. Rarely is it boring, usually it’s very engaging and occasionally, if you are lucky, something blows you away and you think ‘I am so glad I got to see that’. Last night, as part of the Heading North Fringe Festival at Shakespeare North Playhouse, the latter was my experience. Full Frontal Theatre’s To Watch A Man Eat is a powerful, dynamic, mesmerizingly brutal piece of theatre which explores desire, control and ambition in a sharply funny and intelligently observed narrative. Presented throughout as direct narration to audience we initially meet Micky (George Usher) who recounts the story of serial monogamist Je...

Chris Tavener is Faking Cool – The King’s Arms, Salford

11Jul

By Scot CunninghamNo Comments

North West

Chris Tavener is Faking Cool – The King’s Arms, Salford

Armed with debonair wit and a trusty guitar, singer-songwriter Chris Tavener - no stranger to a gig - invites us into The King’s Arms to convince another of his audiences that he’s cooler than cool. Threatening to blow his cover, though, are those discordant, intrusive thoughts. It’s immediately made clear just how well Tavener knows his way around a guitar: he plays with instinctive confidence, continuously filling the space with foot-tapping riffs and melodies. His doubting inner voice plays out loud between songs, enabling the audience to hear the anxious musings that contrast Tavener’s tongue-in-cheek lyrics. This largely successful comedic device could be further deployed by using it to string a narrative; as implied by the title, the perceptibly-cool exterior battling with an i...

9Jul

By Mary FoggNo Comments

North West

The Brit Fest – Ashley Hall Showground

One for all the family, The Brit Fest is jam packed with musical legends, fun activities, creative workshops, delicious food - and all with a wonderful summertime ambience! It felt like only a short time ago that The Brit Fest, sponsored and powered by Myerson Solicitors was announced, a festival to celebrate world-class music and local communities coming together as an exciting summer festival to get in the calendar! Now those summer dates that many had been looking forward to had arrived! The 5th, 6th, 7th July 2024 would see the first The Brit Fest staged at Ashley Hall & Showground in Cheshire and only a mile away from the picturesque village of Hale. The family friendly event hosted by radio presenters Jenny Powell and Mike Toolan, had a top-class line up of acts that included ...

8Jul

By Karen Morley-ChesworthNo Comments

North West

Brassed Off – Theatre by the Lake

Music is a universal language, and it has been at the heart of many working class, Northern communities for generations. And audiences at Theatre by the Lake get the privilege this month of hearing and feeling how brass band music welded people together, gave them strength and pride. The stage adaptation of the hit film Brassed Off blasts into the Keswick theatre and touches the soul. The actors who have come together for this production, in association with the Octagon Theatre Bolton, and Stephen Joseph Theatre, are more than triple threats, they are triplet blowing brass players, who blend seamlessly in with local bans people from Penrith Town Band. The bandsmen and women give a great musical and acting performance in this production. The story of the ballot on whether to tak...

6Jul

By Louise KershawNo Comments

North West

Natter – The Edge, Chorlton

My first trip out reviewing shows taking part in the Greater Manchester Fringe 2024 found me at The Edge in Chorlton to see Queerdog Theatre’s Natter. Set in 1980’s Salford, we follow the story of friends and confidantes, Helen and Linda, as they regularly meet up to watch TV, drink tea with biscuits, put the world to rights and share each other’s worries and woes. Presented very much in the vein of Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough’s classic Lancashire matriarchs, they sit head scarfed and heavily busted in front of the telly enjoying Countdown, Neighbours, The Bill and Bullseye, to name but a few. They gossip, they judge, they bathe in denial, initially avoiding the elephant in the room, the subject of Linda’s gay son, then march through with the herd as they tackle the intri...

3Jul

By Peter RuddickNo Comments

North West

Boyography – Social Refuge, Manchester

The marketing and pre-show announcements for Boyography promise a unique story about queer love and fluid sexuality in a “post-gay world”. The reality is a lot more commonplace. It starts promisingly. When two boys bump into each other in a school corridor something unspoken and powerful is sparked. The locker room encounter between Oliver (Isaac Radmore) and Jake (George Bellamy) feels inevitable, but Oliver’s reaction is a lot more surprising. Experience would tell an audience that the cocksure and laddish one in a relationship like this would be closeted and outwardly homophobic. Far from it. Oliver has a girlfriend, but he also happily sleeps with boys. It is just sex. After all, “bodies are bodies”. Sadly, the intensely modern idea of young men without doubt who reject la...

Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience – Exhibition Centre Liverpool

27Jun

By Mark DavorenNo Comments

North West

Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience – Exhibition Centre Liverpool

Billed as the UK premiere, Annerin Productions’ Beyond Van Gogh arrives in Liverpool as an immersive experience of over 300 masterpieces including three more renowned images – The Starry Night; Sunflowers; and Café Terrace at Night. As much as I enjoy art, Liverpool’s Exhibition Centre isn’t a curated gallery – nor does it claim to be – and equally the event itself is clear that this is very much about artwork freed from its frames rather than any original pieces, so any assessment is based two-fold on the experience itself and the extent to which it enlightens its audience, serving as an introduction to art. There is a winding route from entrance which sets out a simplified backstory to Van Gogh with a hint of his work in the background, designed as an appetiser to the main event wh...

Windrush Warriors – International Anthony Burgess Foundation

26Jun

By Peter RuddickNo Comments

North West

Windrush Warriors – International Anthony Burgess Foundation

When the Windrush scandal began to emerge, the plight of the victims struck a chord because an injustice was being served on people who had already faced discrimination, despite giving so much to the country. Windrush Warriors focuses, not on the scandal itself, but on the real lives of those victims. It is touching, occasionally emotional and very funny. Just like the beautiful Windrush generation themselves. Sister Johnson (Jennifer Marvaree-Robinson) arrives at the local community centre in distress, worried she may face deportation. She finds a, largely, sympathetic audience in her fellow pensioner pals from the West Indies and the quartet decide to organise a fightback. What follows are a set of Vicar of Dibley parish council meeting-like conversations as the self-titled Win...

Burlesque the Musical – Opera House, Manchester

26Jun

By Hannah WildeNo Comments

North West

Burlesque the Musical – Opera House, Manchester

Following the success of the 2010 smash hit film starring global superstars Christina Aguilera and Cher, I knew it would only be a matter of time before Burlesque was converted to a stage show – with the glitz, the glamour and the Broadway-esque showtunes, it’s a perfect fit for the big stage. There were certainly moments of pure brilliance that could have only been delivered in such a format as theatre, but I do have to say that some moments did leave a little to be desired, which was such a shame for a show of this calibre. Let’s start with the exceptional. Firstly, the female lead – down-on-her-luck Ali, played by Jess Folley – was an absolute casting masterclass. Not many aspiring singers can step into the lofty designer shoes of one Christina Aguilera, but vocally Folley held he...

25Jun

By Lou SteggalsNo Comments

North West

Sister Act – Storyhouse Chester

Hold onto your rosaries folks, Philadelphia’s favourite sisters are in the building, ready to bring the musical version of the 1992 hit film vividly to life. Sister Act is a vibrant, feel-good show and it’s easy to see why it has become a staple for am-dram group, full of energetic ensemble numbers, humour and heart. The musical, with music and lyrics by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater respectively, and sparklingly directed by Bill Buckhurst, largely sticks to the film’s plot. Club singer Deloris Van Cartier witnesses her gangster boyfriend Curtis commit murder and is placed into witness protection in a convent, leading to much fish-out-of-water hilarity. The cheerful but tuneless nuns soon tap into Deloris’ talent as a singer to inject some oomph into their choir despite the misgivings...